Need for timely paediatric HIV treatment within primary health care in rural South Africa

<p>Background: In areas where adult HIV prevalence has reached hyperendemic levels, many infants remain at risk of acquiring HIV infection. Timely access to care and treatment for HIV-infected infants and young children remains an important challenge. We explore the extent to which public sector roll-out has met the estimated need for paediatric treatment in a rural South African setting.</p> <p>Methods: Local facility and population-based data were used to compare the number of HIV infected children accessing HAART before 2008, with estimates of those in need of treatment from a deterministic modeling approach. The impact of programmatic improvements on estimated numbers of children in need of treatment was assessed in sensitivity analyses.</p> <p>Findings: In the primary health care programme of HIV treatment 346 children <16 years of age initiated HAART by 2008; 245(70.8%) were aged 10 years or younger, and only 2(<1%) under one year of age. Deterministic modeling predicted 2,561 HIV infected children aged 10 or younger to be alive within the area, of whom at least 521(20.3%) would have required immediate treatment. Were extended PMTCT uptake to reach 100% coverage, the annual number of infected infants could be reduced by 49.2%.</p> <p>Conclusion: Despite progress in delivering decentralized HIV services to a rural sub-district in South Africa, substantial unmet need for treatment remains. In a local setting, very few children were initiated on treatment under 1 year of age and steps have now been taken to successfully improve early diagnosis and referral of infected infants.</p&gt

Where is the UK's pollinator biodiversity? The importance of urban areas for flower-visiting insects

Insect pollinators provide a crucial ecosystem service, but are under threat. Urban areas could be important for pollinators, though their value relative to other habitats is poorly known. We compared pollinator communities using quantified flower-visitation networks in 36 sites (each 1 km2) in three landscapes: urban, farmland and nature reserves. Overall, flower-visitor abundance and species richness did not differ significantly between the three landscape types. Bee abundance did not differ between landscapes, but bee species richness was higher in urban areas than farmland. Hoverfly abundance was higher in farmland and nature reserves than urban sites, but species richness did not differ significantly. While urban pollinator assemblages were more homogeneous across space than those in farmland or nature reserves, there was no significant difference in the numbers of rarer species between the three landscapes. Network-level specialization was higher in farmland than urban sites. Relative to other habitats, urban visitors foraged from a greater number of plant species (higher generality) but also visited a lower proportion of available plant species (higher specialization), both possibly driven by higher urban plant richness. Urban areas are growing, and improving their value for pollinators should be part of any national strategy to conserve and restore pollinators

Reporting HIV in Papua New Guinea: Trends and Omissions from 2000 to 2010

This article presents the findings from a longitudinal content analysis on the reporting of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) in Papua New Guinea’s two national newspapers—The National and Post-Courier—in 2000, 2005 and 2010. The authors tried to answer two key questions: Did press coverage of the disease increase and did the topics change or remain the same? Data from the content analysis showed that coverage of the disease increased significantly during the ten-year study period, and that the framing of the disease moved beyond representing HIV as purely a health story to one that was linked to socio-economic conditions and cultural practices. The feature stories gradually showed more sensitivity to people living with HIV, while they recognised and challenged the social stigma still associated with the disease in much of the countr

Reflections on the teaching symposium at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference 2023

The Microbiology Society Education and Outreach Network (EON) recently hosted the Teaching Symposium at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference, sponsored by Access Microbiology. The presence of the Symposium as an established parallel session within the wider Annual Conference reflects the importance of high-quality, contemporary microbiology education and outreach delivered in an enthusiastic and inclusive manner. At the 2023 Symposium, a variety of pedagogical research projects in higher education learning, teaching and assessment, as well as public engagement projects, were showcased through invited talks, offered talks, flash talks and posters. The event was attended by up to 70 delegates. Several themes were noted throughout the day: engaging with Gen Z (Generation Z, those born between 1996 and 2010), active learning, art in science and engaging with non-higher education (HE) audiences. Inclusivity was a key driver in the organization of the Symposium; the room was set up to encourage discussion and participants could ask questions using an online platform as well as speaking in the room. We now encourage all speakers to consider publishing their work as a peer-reviewed article for further dissemination and impact

Scratching Beneath the Surface : Intentionality in Great Ape Signal production

Despite important similarities having been found between human and animal communication systems, surprisingly little research effort has focussed on whether the cognitive mechanisms underpinning these behaviours are also similar. In particular, it is highly debated whether signal production is the result of reflexive processes, or can be characterised as intentional. Here, we critically evaluate the criteria that are used to identify signals produced with different degrees of intentionality, and discuss recent attempts to apply these criteria to the vocal, gestural, and multimodal communicative signals of great apes and more distantly related species. Finally, we outline the necessary research tools, such as physiologically validated measures of arousal, and empirical evidence that we believe would propel this debate forward and help unravel the evolutionary origins of human intentional communication

Detecting spatial regimes in ecosystems

Research on early warning indicators has generally focused on assessing temporal transitions with limited application of these methods to detecting spatial regimes. Traditional spatial boundary detection procedures that result in ecoregion maps are typically based on ecological potential (i.e. potential vegetation), and often fail to account for ongoing changes due to stressors such as land use change and climate change and their effects on plant and animal communities. We use Fisher information, an information theory-based method, on both terrestrial and aquatic animal data (U.S. Breeding Bird Survey and marine zooplankton) to identify ecological boundaries, and compare our results to traditional early warning indicators, conventional ecoregion maps and multivariate analyses such as nMDS and cluster analysis. We successfully detected spatial regimes and transitions in both terrestrial and aquatic systems using Fisher information. Furthermore, Fisher information provided explicit spatial information about community change that is absent from other multivariate approaches. Our results suggest that defining spatial regimes based on animal communities may better reflect ecological reality than do traditional ecoregion maps, especially in our current era of rapid and unpredictable ecological change

Poor Potential Coverage for 7-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine, Malawi

Streptococcus pneumoniae infections can be prevented by using new conjugate vaccines, but these vaccines have limited serogroup coverage. We report the first serogrouping data from carried and invasive isolates obtained from children and adults in Malawi. The 7-valent vaccine would cover 41% of invasive isolates from children and 25% from adults. A 9-valent vaccine, including types 1 and 5, would cover 66% of invasive isolates from children and 55% from adults

Managing fisheries for maximum nutrient yield

Wild-caught fish are a bioavailable source of nutritious food that, if managed strategically, could enhance diet quality for billions of people. However, optimising nutrient production from the sea has not been a priority, hindering development of nutrition-sensitive policies. With fisheries management increasingly effective at rebuilding stocks and regulating sustainable fishing, we can now begin to integrate nutritional outcomes within existing management frameworks. Here, we develop a conceptual foundation for managing fisheries for multispecies Maximum Nutrient Yield (mMNY). We empirically test our approach using size-based models of North Sea and Baltic Sea fisheries and show that mMNY is predicted by the relative contribution of nutritious species to total catch and their vulnerability to fishing, leading to trade-offs between catch and specific nutrients. Simulated nutrient yield curves suggest that vitamin D, which is deficient in Northern European diets, was underfished at fishing levels that returned maximum catch weights. Analysis of global catch data shows there is scope for nutrient yields from most of the world's marine fisheries to be enhanced through nutrient-sensitive fisheries management. With nutrient composition data now widely available, we expect our mMNY framework to motivate development of nutrient-based reference points in specific contexts, such as data-limited fisheries. Managing for mMNY alongside policies that promote access to fish could help close nutrient gaps for coastal populations, maximising the contribution of wild-caught fish to global food and nutrition security

Dissemination of clinical practice guidelines: A content analysis of patient versions

Background. Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are typically written for health care professionals but are meant to assist patients with health care decisions. A number of guideline producers have started to develop patient versions of CPGs to reach this audience. Objective. To describe the content and purpose of patient versions of CPGs and compare with patient and public views of CPGs. Design. A descriptive qualitative study with a directed content analysis of a sample of patient versions of CPGs published and freely available in English from 2012 to 2014. Results. We included 34 patient versions of CPGs from 17 guideline producers. Over half of the patient versions were in dedicated patient sections of national/professional agency websites. There was essentially no information about how to manage care in the health care system. The most common purpose was to equip people with information about disease, tests or treatments, and recommendations, but few provided quantitative data about benefits and harms of treatments. Information about beliefs, values and preferences, accessibility, costs, or feasibility of the interventions was rarely addressed. Few provided personal stories or scenarios to personalize the information. Three versions described the strength of the recommendation or the level of evidence. Limitations. Our search for key institutions that produce patient versions of guidelines was comprehensive, but we only included English and freely available versions. Future work will include other languages. Conclusions. This review describes the current landscape of patient versions of CPGs and suggests that these versions may not address the needs of their targeted audience. Research is needed about how to personalize information, provide information about factors contributing to the recommendations, and provide access